A man once proved to him syllogistically that he had horns, so he put his hand to his forehead and said, “I do not see them.” And in a similar manner he replied to one who had been asserting that there was no such thing as motion, by getting up and walking away. When a man was talking about the heavenly bodies and meteors, “Pray how many days,” said he to him, “is it since you came down from heaven?”
A profligate eunuch had written on his house, “Let no evil thing enter in.”
“Where,” said Diogenes, “is the master of the house going?”
After having anointed his feet with perfume, he said that the ointment from his head mounted up to heaven, and that from his feet up to his nose.
When the Athenians entreated him to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and said that in the shades below the initiated had the best seats; “It will,” he replied, “be an absurd thing if Agesilaus and Epaminondas are to live in the mud, and some miserable wretches, who have been initiated, are to be in the islands of the blest.”
Some mice crept up to his table, and he said, “See, even Diogenes maintains his favourites.”
Once, when he was leaving the bath, and a man asked him whether many men were bathing, he said, “No;” but when a number of people came out, he confessed that there were a great many.
When Plato called him a dog, he said, “Undoubtedly, for I have come back to those who sold me.”